Bowe Bergdahl Further Polarizes American Politics

“We needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life.” So said Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, an Army sergeant in Vietnam, of Barack Obama’s trade of five hard-core Taliban leaders at Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban prisoner for five years. The trade speaks well of America’s resolve to leave no soldier behind. And the country surely shared the joy of Bergdahl’s family on learning their son was alive and coming home. But this secret swap, as well as the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture and captivity, are likely to further polarize our people and poison our politics.

First, the price the Taliban extorted from us is high. We could be seeing these killers again on a battlefield after their year’s detention in Qatar. Other Americans may have to suffer and perhaps die for our having freed these five from Guantanamo. Taliban leader Mullah Omar is proclaiming a “big victory” over the Americans, and it is a morale boost for the Taliban we are fighting. As for the Afghan government, it was kept in the dark. The message received in Kabul must be: The Americans are taking care of their own, cutting deals behind our back at our expense, packing up, going home. We cannot rely on them. We are on our own.

But as for the claim that we “never negotiate with terrorists,” it is not as though we have not been down this road before. During Korea, we negotiated for a truce and return of our POWs with the same Chinese Communists who had tortured and brainwashed them. During Vietnam we negotiated for the return of our POWs with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong who massacred 3,000 civilians in Hue in the Tet Offensive. Jimmy Carter negotiated with the Ayatollah’s regime to get our embassy hostages out of Iran. The Iran-Contra scandal was about Ronald Reagan’s decision to send TOW missiles secretly to Iran, for Iran’s aid in getting hostages released by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bibi Netanyahu today insists that America not recognize a new Palestinian government that includes Hamas, for Hamas is a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction. Yet Bibi released 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011, many of them guilty of atrocities, in exchange for a single Israeli soldier held by Hamas in Gaza, Pvt. Gilad Shalit. Yasser Arafat, Menachem Begin, and Nelson Mandela were all once declared to be terrorists heading up terrorist organizations—the PLO, the Irgun, and the ANC. And all three have something else in common: All became winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Today’s terrorist may be tomorrow’s statesman. The remains of Lenin and Mao rest in honor in their capitals. Jomo Kenyatta, founding father of Kenya, was once the chieftain of the Mau Mau. When it comes to negotiating with domestic hostage-takers, do we not, along with training SWAT teams to take them out, train men to negotiate with them? How many of us, with a family member held by a vicious criminal demanding ransom, would refuse to negotiate? Yet, if those released Taliban are indeed “hardened terrorists who have the blood of Americans … on their hands,” as John McCain charges, why were they not prosecuted and punished like the Nazis at Nuremberg?

America has sent a message to its enemies by trading five war criminals for Sergeant Bergdahl: The nation with a preponderance of the world’s hard power has a soft heart. And though America rejoiced with the parents of Sergeant Bergdahl this weekend, other troubling issues have begun to be raised.

Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, said on ABC that Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction” and “was an American prisoner of war, captured on the battlefield.” But is this true? His fellow soldiers say Bergdahl was not missing in action, and not wounded. Disillusioned with the war, he walked away from his post. In an email to his parents three days before he went missing Bergdahl wrote, “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of U.S. soldier is just the lie of fools. … I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.” For days, Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers were out searching for him, risking their lives to prevent his Taliban captors from taking him into Pakistan. U.S. soldiers may have been wounded and some may have died in the attempt to rescue their lost sergeant.

Did Sergeant Bergdahl defect, did he desert, did he collaborate with the enemy? We do not know. But these charges will have to be investigated. For if they are not, or if they are proven true and Bergdahl evades all punishment, it would be a blow to Army morale and widen the gulf between the Army and commander in chief that was on display at West Point a week ago. Sergeant Bergdahl, one suspects, is about to become a famous and representative figure of his country’s divisions in the Obama era.

24 Responses to Bowe Bergdahl Further Polarizes American Politics

Tell me again why our young, often naive Americans are fighting in Afghanistan? It seems that any reasonable person would have realized by now that fighting in the graveyard of empires, in the fog of decieit that always accompanies war, offers no cause that is in the interests of the millions of Americans living in the homeland. It’s time to stop demonizing those who came earlier to that realization. Fighting for the regime of Hamid Karzai, as specially printed millions in a slush fund are delivered to him each month? Believing you are doing something noble, isn’t the same as doing something noble. The finest thing we could do, has been done, inadvertently or not, to rescue someone who dared to follow their consciences, recognizing the truth, as we once told those Nuremberg military defendants claiming they were justified because they were obeying orders. We need more people willing to stand up and challenge our government grown so unaccountable, whether in military matters or mass surveillance.

“U.S. soldiers may have been wounded and some may have died in the attempt to rescue their lost sergeant.”

One small point, Pat. When Bergdahl went missing five years ago, he was not a sergeant. He was automatically promoted to that rank while in captivity. He was a private when he went missing, based on what I have read.

By the time Mr Bergdahl abandoned the war, per Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama had also acknowledged in cabinet meetings that the war was a political exercise. If Bergdahl is punished so too should be those who put him in Afghanistan essentially without a mission.

The cargocultocrasy that is this administration is gloriously illustrated by Susan Rice deploying one coconut-headphone falsehood after another while the audience she would persuade is long since withdrawn.

“Sergeant Bergdahl, one suspects, is about to become a famous and representative figure of his country’s divisions in the Obama era.”

And yet, it does not have to be like that. It is entirely possible to say, “bring our boy home, but if need by, charge and try him for desertion.” But that is not what is being said. He has already been tried and convicted; it is as if the United States had no responsibility to protect one of its own, as soon as an allegation arose of potential misconduct.

This cannot have been an easy call; it did not have to become politically charged.

Republican politicians in America play both sides of the game when they have a chance to politicize national issues!

If our current president did not negotiate, Republicans will cry for leaving a fellow American behind enemy line.

If our current president negotiates 1 for 5, then Republicans will again politicize the whole issue why the deal was not negotiated for 5 to 5.

The bottleline is Republican President Bush II made a serious policy blunder by going to Afghanistan for nation-building in the first place, instead of using thermo-nuclear weapons in 2001 as Democrat President Truman did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Now, after a colossal waste of American blood and treasure for 13 years, Afghanistan remains as corrupt as it was during the days of Usamah bin’Ladeen.

Majumder: how would you propose dealing with the massive violent reaction that the countries bordering Afghanistan — such as Pakistan and Iran and CHINA — would have if we used nuclear weapons whose fallout would poison some of their land / water / people?

As for the Afghan government, it was kept in the dark. The message received in Kabul must be: The Americans are taking care of their own, cutting deals behind our back at our expense, packing up, going home. We cannot rely on them. We are on our own.

When have Americans ever been able to rely on Karzai and his government? From the man at the top to the numerous rank and file Afghan soldiers who have turned on their American “partners”, the Afghans we are fighting with have never been ones who showed they deserved our trust.

If you must go to war, be prepared either to obliterate your enemy or to have to one day sit down with him and discuss peace, including the exchange of POWs. Civilised countries no longer have the heart for the first option, so the Bergdahl prisoner swap should come as no surprise, although whether the Americans negotiated the best deal is debatable.

Just because he didn’t wage thermonuclear war as our commentator tongue-in-cheek (I hope) urges, the destruction of both Iraq and Afghanistan is about as far as you can get from “going to Afghanistan for nation-building”
These sorts of things, are not conducicive to the health of the precious bodily fluids of either Iraqis, Afghans or Americans.

As quote in the NY Times: Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said that there was a larger matter at play: The American military does not leave soldiers behind. “When you’re in the Navy, and you go overboard, it doesn’t matter if you were pushed, fell or jumped,” he said. “We’re going to turn the ship around and pick you up.”

There’s no question that the U.S. did the right thing in bringing him home, regardless of whether he deserted or was captured. Let him be tried, and if convicted receive the appropriate punishment. But that punishment is not leaving him in Afghanistan.

Honestly, I don’t see how those hard-core Taliban leaders are in any way more dangerous to the US than all the other hard-core Taliban leaders that replaced them after they had been were captured. This whole affair is a pathetic temper tantrum by the Republican Party permanent outrage machinery whose commitment to the troops is no more than a pathetic soundbite.

This whole episode is depressing. Must we politicize everything? All our soldiers are not “heroes.” They are human beings. If five years in Taliban captivity is not enough “punishment” for whatever he did (and we will never really know) Let him be!

Boy I hate this headline. Bergdahl Further Politicizes…nonsense! The various political tribes’strident out-cries about the situation are what politicizes this. We don’t even know the whole story yet, but people are weighing in with their uninformed analyses.

Trading 5 over the hill terrorists for one heroic (at best) soldier is hardly worth a page 5 paragraph. There is a party that would like to politicize the issue as they did the terrorist attack in Lybia, claiming that fiscal policy is “class war,” and the issue of same sex marriage. The results did not turn out well for them.

I wouldn’t say that anyone who spent five years in Taliban captivity got off unpunished, particularly when troops found guilty of this crime typically serve just a few months behind bars, at most. Assuming Bergdahl is even guilty. Regardless, he is one of ours and it was our obligation to get him back. What, would you have left him there to rot? I will listen to criticism of the man from other veterans, but I won’t take it very seriously from anyone who’s never faced the pressures of service in a war zone, particularly if they are merely using the situation to grind a political axe, giving no thought to the human costs.

Once again, the Obama Administration gets popped in the nose by the spiked football. I’m less alarmed by the trade than by the folks who are steering foreign policy and believe leaving one’s post is serving with honor and distinction.

Protest the war when you get home. Doing so by compromising your battle buddies while serving in a war zone is a criminal act.

“Once again, the Obama Administration gets popped in the nose by the spiked football. I’m less alarmed by the trade than by the folks who are steering foreign policy and believe leaving one’s post is serving with honor and distinction.

Protest the war when you get home. Doing so by compromising your battle buddies while serving in a war zone is a criminal act.”

And that gets dealt with at home. I really hate to defend the admin on this miss matter. If the WH knew the circumstances and refused to act that’s one thing. If they were operating in ignorance that is quite another.

But no american serviceman should be advocating that we leave other US servicemen abroad in enemy hands. They may feel that way, but to express it suggests they have no better understanding than the accusations being made.